■ The Pop Edition
October 30: War of the Worlds Turns 88, Winkler at 81
Henry Winkler
BORN 1945 · TURNS 81
Winkler played Arthur Fonzarelli for ten seasons of Happy Days, a role so overwhelming that he spent decades proving he could act outside a leather jacket. He finally won an Emmy for Barry in 2018, four decades after Fonzie first gave the thumbs-up.
Diego Maradona
BORN 1960 · WOULD HAVE BEEN 66
Maradona carried Argentina to the 1986 World Cup almost single-handedly, scoring the Hand of God and the Goal of the Century in the same match against England. He died in 2020, but footage of that run still gets replayed every tournament.
Gavin Rossdale
BORN 1965 · TURNS 61
As Bush's frontman, Rossdale became a fixture of 1990s alt-rock radio with Sixteen Stone, a record that outsold most of the grunge bands it was lumped in with. He later spent years as a coach on The Voice UK, trading guitar solos for swivel chairs.
Nia Long
BORN 1970 · TURNS 56
Long broke through as Brandi in Boyz n the Hood before becoming a rom-com fixture through the 1990s and 2000s with Love Jones and The Best Man. She's kept working steadily in both film and television ever since.
Matthew Morrison
BORN 1978 · TURNS 48
Morrison spent six seasons as glee club teacher Will Schuester on Glee, a show that briefly made show-choir covers a dominant force on the pop charts. He's since returned to his Broadway roots, where he started before Glee ever existed.
THE MOMENT: War of the Worlds Panics America
On October 30, 1938, CBS Radio aired Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre adaptation of H.G. Wells' novel as a series of fake news bulletins interrupting a dance music broadcast, and some listeners who tuned in late genuinely believed Martians were invading New Jersey. The exact scale of the panic has been exaggerated over the decades — newspapers, eager to discredit radio as a rival for advertising dollars, ran up the story — but real phone calls flooded police stations and local stations that night, and Welles became a household name almost overnight.
The broadcast worked because it borrowed the exact rhythm of real bulletins: a scheduled program interrupted, a reporter on scene, dead air where a voice should be. It's the reason media scholars still teach the episode, and why Welles spent the rest of his career fielding questions about a show he made before he'd even turned 24. CBS never ran anything quite like it again, and the FCC tightened rules about simulated news broadcasts not long after.
PRIME TIME: Halloweentown Premieres
Disney Channel aired Halloweentown on October 30, 1998, a modest original movie about a girl who discovers her grandmother runs a town full of witches, warlocks, and shapeshifters. It wasn't a ratings phenomenon at the time — Disney Channel Original Movies were still finding their footing — but it became one of the network's most rewatched titles every October, spawning three sequels and a permanent slot in cable's Halloween rotation.
Part of its staying power is star Debbie Reynolds, who played grandmother Aggie Cromwell with a warmth that made the fantasy premise feel lived-in rather than cartoonish. The film also leaned into practical sets and makeup over effects, which has aged better than a lot of its late-90s TV-movie peers. Decades later, St. Helens, Oregon — the real town used for filming — still markets itself around the connection every fall.
1975Saturday Night Live airs its sixth episode, with host Rob Reiner, as the show was still finding its sketch rhythms.
1985The Golden Girls, already a hit, airs an early-season episode that helped cement Betty White and Bea Arthur's chemistry for TV audiences.
1992Madonna's Erotica album arrives in stores paired with the Sex coffee-table book, a one-two marketing punch that dominated entertainment coverage for weeks.
2001Michael Jackson's Invincible, his final studio album, continues its run on the charts amid a reportedly enormous production budget.
2009The video game Brütal Legend, starring Jack Black, hits store shelves to a cult following that outlasted its modest sales.
2015Adele's single Hello continues its unprecedented streaming and sales run just weeks after release, on its way to a record-breaking debut week.
